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Dr Norhasnida Zawawi

Honorary Senior Fellow

Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
n.zawawi@uq.edu.au

Overview

Dr. Norhasnida Zawawi has been an Honorary Senior Fellow at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) since 2019. She has joined the Australian Native Bee Association (ANBA) subcommittee for the development of native bee honey standard application to Food Standards and Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) since 2020. Currently based in Malaysia, she is a senior lecturer at the Department of Food Science, Faculty of Food Science and Technology (FSTM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) and a food and nutritional scientist affiliated with two laboratories, the Laboratory of Functional Carbohydrate and Protein at FSTM and Laboratory of Halal Science at the Halal Products Research Institute, both in UPM. Her administration and research responsibilities include being a member of the Working Group for Kelulut Honey (native bee honey) Standard under the Department of Standards Malaysia, Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), Malaysia, and Vice President of the Task Group for Stingless Bee Honey Standard elected by Apimondia Asia. Recently, she has been appointed as an Editorial Board Member of the Pertanika Journal of Tropical Agricultural Science, one of UPM's publications and have had experiences as reviewer of scientific manuscripts in her field of research for many high-impact factor journals such as Food Research International, Current Research in Food Science, Food Bioscience and Journal of Apicultural Research. Together with QAAFI research team, she has made the discovery of a rare sugar (trehalulose) as the primary sugar available in the native bee honey during her 9 months research attachment in 2018. As the principal investigator for 7 research projects, she was awarded grants from UPM and government ministries amounting to RM906,340.00. Currently, thirty-seven of her research publications are Scopus-indexed with a total of 624 citations, earning her the H-index of 17.

Research Impacts

Dr. Norhasnida Zawawi's main research work are on functional foods with major focus on native bee honey and alternative milk from plant seed beverage's physicochemical and bioactive properties. The discovery of a rare sugar (disaccharide), trehalulose as one of the main sugar in native bee honey other than fructose and glucose, have proven traditional claims of the medicinal and health benefits of this honey. In her manuscript published in the Journal of Food Chemistry in 2022 and Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture in 2023, she has discussed the needs for a specific native bee honey standard for honey at the international level because this unique type of honey, although high in quality, does not fit with the current CODEX International Standard for Honey. Since then, the study and publications of native bee honey produced by many native bee species worldwide have also increased exponentially. The discovery have also increased public attention, knowledge and demand of native bee honey throughout the world, which resulted in progressive development of the native bee honey industry.

Publications

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Publications

Journal Article

Conference Publication

  • Stingless bee honeys feature an unusual bioactive sugar, trehalulose

    Hungerford, N. L., Zhang, J., Smith, T. J., Yates, H. S. A., Carpinelli de Jesus, M., Webber, D., Stone, I. S. J. , Blanchfield, J. T., Zawawi, N. and Fletcher, M. T. (2022). Stingless bee honeys feature an unusual bioactive sugar, trehalulose. 3rd Australian Native Bee Conference, Rosehill, NSW Australia, 11-12 June 2022.

  • Determination of phenolic compounds and organic acids of stingless bee honey from Malaysia and Australia

    Ramlan, Nurul Ainaa Farhanah Mat, Zaini, Nur Syamimi, Hungerford, Natasha, Fletcher, Mary and Zawawi, Norhasnida (2022). Determination of phenolic compounds and organic acids of stingless bee honey from Malaysia and Australia. TropAg International Agriculture Conference 2022, Brisbane, QLD Australia, 31 October - 2 November 2022.

  • Stingless bees produce honey rich in the beneficial disaccharide, trehalulose

    Hungerford, Natasha L., Zhang, Jiali, Smith, Tobias J., Carpinelli de Jesus, Matheus, Yates, Hans S. A., Chowdhury, Sadia A., Carter, James F., Webber, Dennis, Stone, Isobella S. J., Blanchfield, Joanne T., Zawawi, Norhasnida, Schirra, Horst J., Tran, Trong D. and Fletcher, Mary T. (2021). Stingless bees produce honey rich in the beneficial disaccharide, trehalulose. Symposium of Research & Innovation for Food (SoRIF), Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia via WebEX, 23-24 June 2021.

  • Stingless Bee Honey’s unique properties

    Hungerford, Natasha L., Zhang, Jiali, Smith, Tobias J., Carpinelli de Jesus, Matheus, Yates, Hans S. A., Chowdhury, Sadia A., Carter, James F., Webber, Dennis, Stone, Isobella S. J., Blanchfield, Joanne T., Zawawi, Norhasnida and Fletcher, Mary T. (2021). Stingless Bee Honey’s unique properties. Australian Apitherapy Association Global Conference 2021, Online, 26-27 November 2021.

  • Stingless bee honey as a unique source of trehalulose

    Hungerford, Natasha L., Zhang, Jiali, Carpinelli de Jesus, Matheus, Yates, Hans, Webber, Dennis, Stone Isolbella S. J., Blanchfield, Joanne T., Zawawi, Norhasnida and Fletcher, Mary T. (2020). Stingless bee honey as a unique source of trehalulose. 5th Queensland Annual Chemistry Symposium, QACS 2020, Brisbane, QLD Australia, 27 November 2020.

  • Pyrrolizidine alkaloids in honey

    Melksham, K.M., Hungerford, N.L., Martin, C.L., Fletcher, M.T., Carter, S.J., Anuj, S.R., Tianqi, Z., Zawawi, N., Sharma, E., Yin, M., Nguyen, T.T.P., Were, S.T. and Tan, B. (2018). Pyrrolizidine alkaloids in honey. ICFA 2018, 2nd International Conference on Food Analysis, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, 19-22 November 2018.

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ORCID: 0000-0001-7459-5025

Scopus ID: 57147790000

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